In the report, AMR analysts Rob Bois, Marianne D'Aquila and Karen Carter note that the customer management software market returned to double-digit growth rates "that haven't been seen since the dotcom boom."

"Fueled by renewed interest in customer experience management," notes the report, "heightened accountability and heavy development investments from the vendors, the CRM acronym has become fashionable again."

"This represents the strongest year-over-year growth rate for the segment since 2000, when the customer management market was still in hyper-growth," write the analysts. "The 2007 growth rate also marked a plateau for the consolidation that has suppressed growth over the past several years, indicating a new level of maturity for the customer management software market." (For an alternative take on CRM, see "Open Source CRM Delivers More Control, Less Cost.")

The Top 10 CRM Vendors in 2007

These software vendors own the top 10 spots in AMR Research's customer management market.

The Top 10

CRM '07 Revenue / '06-'07 Growth Rate

1. SAP

$2.7 billion / 20%

2. Oracle

$1.9 billlion / 39%

3. Salesforce.com

$749 million / 51%

4. Cegidim Dendrite

$602 million / 82%

5. Amdocs

$522 million / 14%

6. Aspect

$480 million / -2%

7. Verint Witness Actionable Solutions

$395 million / 78%

8. Microsoft

$360 million / 39%

9. SAS

$323 million / 34%

10. Avaya

$267 million / 2%

Source: AMR Research, 2008

The AMR analysts point out that the top 20 vendors realized a more robust growth rate (28 percent) than the overall average (12 percent).

The Rich Get Richer

All the recent enterprise software market consolidation has solidified the top players' positions: The top five CRM vendors now own 46 percent of the entire market share, which is up from a 40 percent share in 2006 and a less than 30 percent share in 2005, notes the report. (Also see "The Top Five Supply Chain Management Vendors.")

"Clearly, the heavyweights set the pace for the market," write the AMR analysts, "and with economic uncertainty entering the picture in 2008, the trend will only accelerate."